Tech to support an ageing population — recap from our latest London meetup
Yesterday was the UN International Day of Older Persons, a day to celebrate older human rights champions, and promote the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by older persons.
We believe technology has the potential to transform the lives of older people for the better, and last week we held a special Tech for Good meetup to showcase a number of tech ventures using technology to enhance the lives of older people.
We heard from Umesh Pandya, co-founder of Wayfindr, a not-for-profit tech venture that empowers vision impaired people to navigate the world independently. Umesh talked about how they designed the world’s first open standard for audio navigation to help blind and vision-impaired people to navigate both inside and outside of buildings.
Tom Casson, co-founder and chief product officer of How Do I? used the event to soft-launch their new product called Refresh, which is a mobile video platform to support people living with dementia. While they didn’t start out designing for this group (the product was initially built for people with learning disabilities), How Do I? have been responsive to meeting the demand for their product from people with dementia and their carers.
We also heard from David Lethbridge and Adam Vaughan, founders of Unforgettable, a marketplace for products for people affected by dementia. They’ve used the marketplace to research what users need and want, and have now started producing their own products, giving us a sneak peek of their new music player on the night.
The resounding message from all three of these ventures was on the importance of inclusive design. For example, While Unforgettable’s products are designed to meet the needs of people with dementia, their inclusive design means they are attractive to a broader audience, which is fundamental to their appeal and financial success. “Our products don’t look like they’re for people with dementia — they just look like great products,” Adam said.
Phoebe Innes-Wilson, London Aging2.0 community lead, joined to tell us about the Aging2.0 network, a voluntary community of innovators taking on the biggest challenges and opportunities in ageing. They have 65 chapters in 25 countries around the world. She challenged the room to shift to a ‘2.0’ mindset and invited people to join the network on aging2london.slack.com.
Finally, Simon Tucker, innovation lead, and Neil Gunn, head of digital, at Independent Age gave us an update on some new projects from their charity. They mentioned a report by Rethink, which found that older people are more tech savvy than many people assume, and are willing to learn new things. With this in mind, the charity plans to develop a number of tech tools to help support older people with loneliness and isolation, as well as providing advice on making the transition into retirement.
You can view the slides from the night here and catch up on all the community announcements here.
The Tech for Good Meetup group is for anyone interested in using tech for social change. We hold events every month or so, to bring people together to connect and learn. This event was brought to you by Bethnal Green Ventures in partnership with CAST, and hosted at the Health Foundry.
Sign up here to join the 7500 members in the London Tech for Good Meetup.
If you’re working on an idea for using technology to support the ageing population then we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us at hello@bethnalgreenventures.com
